In spite of the many court games known and played over the years, a need exists for a court game providing new aspects of amusement for players of both very high and very low levels of skill and mobility and which can be played with relatively very little equipment and capital outlay. Furthermore, any such game should appeal to all ages and family groups for spontaneous play in public places, requiring a projectile constructed to minimize risk of pain or injury either to the players, spectators or bystanders hit inadvertently, particularly very young children, thus enabling the game to be played, for example on public beaches.
At the same time the projectile should be both durable and of low manufacturing cost, adapted for manufacture for the mass market place by conventional mass production techniques.
Furthermore, such projectile should be both attractive to but harmless to young children, in particular, devoid of hard, sharp, breakable or toxic objects and sized to obviate risk of ingestion and choking so that the projectile can be freely carried and used by young children without supervision.
Many prior attempts at providing amusing projectiles have been documented. For example U.S. Pat. No. 4,294,447 to Clarke teaches the attachment of streamers to a resilient ball. However, hard objects are required to effect the attachment, while incremental breakage of streamers may occur during twirling with consequential risk of dislodgement of the hard body. Furthermore, the commercially available sponge rubber ball taught as suitable has insufficient density to permit a very high speed to be maintained in flight particularly with the presence of drogue- forming streamers.
Other documents teaching projectiles including streamers, trailing flights or drogues, include U.S. Pat. No. 2,484,475 to Studer, disclosing a shuttlecock, but with a stiff or hard leading end; U.S. Pat. No. 3,368,815 teaching a streamer-tailed projectile; but with a metal cap; U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,319 a ribbon-tailed plastic ball, but with a hard mobile weight therein.
Other patents document projectiles which include ball-like skins filled with particulate material which is, however, not sufficiently effective in force distribution on impact, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,943,066 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,480,280, while the only partial filling, together with the presence of interstices between particles, preclude the projectile density being sufficient to achieve the high flight speeds desired, unless the particles are themselves of an undesirably dense and hard material.
A further, particulate filled, non-rolling, ball is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,924,856 but also has an undesirable, rigid finger-clip.